This invention relates to the field of blanking panels for datacentre racks. In particular, the invention relates to an adjustable blanking panel for datacentre racks.
Datacenters are reliant on appropriate airflow to keep servers and infrastructure cool and operating within known system limits. Some servers have to run within certain temperature thresholds otherwise system degradation may occur.
Datacenters typically use rows of racks with cold and hot aisles, whereby at the front of the rack, cold air is blown up from a raised floor into the path of the fans of the servers contained within the rack. The cold air is sucked through the server, heated (via the natural process of the internal components) and then pushed out the rear of the rack into the hot row.
In order for devices to work efficiently, the air supplied needs to be at a constant temperature. Currently hot and cold air can mix in any unfilled spaces between devices in the racks, warming the cold air supplied to the devices. The temperature of the cold air rises forcing devices to work harder to maintain a constant temperature. In turn, this affects the efficiency of the datacentre (as described in the points below) as well as the local environment due to extra power usage and the site carbon footprint. The cost of running a room with set temperatures and humidity is high as air conditioning and fan speeds all add to the general electrical use of the room. This is now a global problem with datacenters often measured on a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) scale and CO2 based levels.
Higher supply temperatures are also a factor in causing the following problems:                Premature component failure;        Reduced processing power by going into a state of degradation;        Hotter exhausts which the room air conditioning handlers (computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units) have to try lower to maintain room environment, potentially exceeding room capacity;        More electrical usage by a server to ramp-up fans and cooling technologies; and        More electrical usage by datacenter air handlers to ramp-up fans to supply suitable temperatures.        
To prevent air mixing, rack panels (also known as blanking panels) are used to fill any voids within the rack to prevent air circulation or mixing. There are several versions typically supplied by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Current blanking panels are typically of standard sizes and do not fill non-standard spaces and thus cannot reduce mixing within these spaces. The term “U” is an industry set space within a typical rack.
Existing known blanking panels have the following problems:                Blanking panels are traditionally fixed 1 U or 3 U sizes, and cannot combat odd spaces, for example, a third of a U, or at the side of a system.        They are solid, made with thick plastic, metal or other solid material, which causes issues with storage when they are not installed in the rack, often resulting in many datacenter owners throwing them out, later finding they should have installed the panels.        Existing blanking panels only block the horizontal spaces and leave any vertical spaces empty.        They cannot bend round shapes, for implementations of rack furniture that do not use standard installations.        All prior art blanking panels require connections on both sides of the rack.        
Therefore, there is a need in the art to address the aforementioned problems.